Anatomy of a disruption: Lewis and Clark Law School students try to shut down Christina Hoff Sommers

Regardless of whether you think Christina Hoff Sommers is a “true feminist”, she doesn’t deserve to be treated like this when she’s giving a talk. People everywhere have been trying to shut her down, almost as if she’s a Nazi. In fact, she’s an equity feminist who’s been critical of gender feminism, but extreme Leftists and some gender feminists have demonized her beyond reason.

Have a look at these tweets from Andy Ngo about how Sommers was greeted when trying to talk at Lewis and Clark College law school in Portland, Oregon. (Portland, of course, is Disruption and Antifa Central in America.)

Oh, and given yesterday’s post on how the Right is more censorious than the left, if someone can come up with similar recent videos of a left-wing speaker being shut down by the right, I’ll be glad to post that, too. It doesn’t seem to happen often, and I think I’d know because I read news from left-wing sites. But I’m an equal-opportunity kvetcher, and hate disruption of all stripes.

Ngo’s first tweet shows a joint letter from the National Lawyers Guild, the Minority Law Student Association, the Women’s Law caucus, the Immigration Student group, and the Jewish Law Society, urging that her invitation be rescinded immediately. Barring that, it’s clear that they intend to disrupt her talk. Lawyers! Do they know the First Amendment? And since I’m a secular Jew, I’m ashamed of the Jewish Law Society trying to shut her down.

Sommers maintains a sense of humor, something that the hyper-Left seems to lack:

Campus safety asked @CHSommers if it was true that she came armed with a gun for security purposes. Christina’s response? “My Malti-pooh Izzy is my security but she’s not here.” pic.twitter.com/Mcf3GLmiuG

WHERE IS CAMPUS SECURITY? Remember, compared to people like the inflammatory Steve Bannon, or provocateurs like Milo Yiannopoulos, Sommers is weak beer. But she does have something to say, and something that students should be allowed to hear:

But wait, there’s more! The protestors, especially an enraged woman student, demanded that Sommers answer questions before she was through with her talk. Notice the “rape culture” people standing in front of the room, the sign-holders to the right of the room, and the violent anger of the protesting students.

Sommers still kept her cool, but the protestors can’t keep theirs. And nobody, regardless of their views, should have to put up with treatment like this.

Insider Higher Ed reports on the disruption, and on a weaselly statement from the dean of diversity and inclusion at the school, saying that she saw the students were antsy to attack Sommers, and that’s why she (the dean) told Sommers to cut short her remarks.

Janet Steverson, a law professor and dean of diversity and inclusion at the law school, said in an interview Monday night that the students who blocked the entrances to the auditorium and who interrupted Sommers violated college rules. She said that she anticipated “consequences” for those students but that she did not know what those would be.

Steverson stressed that it was only a minority of students who disrupted and that Sommers was given the opportunity to speak. [JAC: Seriously? What kind of opportunity is it when you’re constantly interrupted with chants, singing, and enraged shouts?]

Sommers, on Twitter, criticized Steverson for asking her to cut short her remarks and move to the question period. Steverson said she did so to promote an orderly discussion. She said she was worried that Sommers was going on too long and that the question period would be minimal. Steverson said the argument she and others made to students not to disrupt was premised in part on the idea that students would be able to question Sommers. [JAC: the reason Sommers “went on too long” was not her fault; she was being interrupted and delayed by the protestors.]

“I could see the students getting antsy,” Steverson said, explaining why she asked Sommers to move quickly to the question period.

Steverson said that, at another point when some were disrupting, she asked them to stop so that their classmates could ask questions. “I think it worked out as well as it could have.” [JAC: Nope. They could have used campus security to make the protestors sit down and shut up until Q&A time.]

Steverson said it was important to understand that some of those protesting Sommers viewed her as personally attacking those who have reported sexual assaults. “This is a very personal thing,” she said.

At the same time, Steverson said that while there are many grounds on which to criticize Sommers, she did not think it appropriate to call her a fascist, as the protesting students did repeatedly. “In the law school it is important to define the terms that you are using and apply the facts to support the allegations that you have made,” she said.

If you want to complain about this fracas, and how the University failed to prevent it, here are some contacts. I’m writing two emails.

Wim Wiewel, President of Lewis and Clark College:
Email: president@lclark.edu

I have read about and watched videos of Lewis and Clark College students disrupting the recent talk of Christina Hoff Sommers at your university. Apparently your University made no attempt to expel the protestors nor call security to quell the disruption. Rather, Dr. Steverson apparently asked Sommers to cut her talk short so the angry students could ask her questions afterwards. The failure to expel disruptive students of course deprived the other students of their right to hear Ms. Sommers’s talk. While I don’t agree with everything that Ms. Sommers says, that’s irrelevant. She is no provocateur or “fascist” (as your students called her), but a thoughtful person with ideas that should be heard. Nothing is gained by letting disruptive protestors interrupt or shut down a speaker—except disrepute for your University and its law school.

As an advocate of free speech on campus, which my own University espouses, I am writing to ask why security was not deployed to end the disruption, even by removing the protestors if necessary. Do you intend to discipline those students who tried to “deplatform” the speaker?

Thank you for your attention.Cordially,
Jerry Coyne
Professor Emeritus
Department of Ecology and Evolution
The University of Chicago

The proper response to the students demanding “no platform for fascists” was for Administration (Steverson) to agree and then warn the students that if they don’t stop interfering with the speaker they will face disciplinary charges including possible suspension and expulsion.

Sommers was probably to polite to Steverson, I wish she had told the Dean, “I am not through with my invited talk, are you shutting me down?”

Time for right wing students to start showing up at board meetings and other administrative functions. It would be interesting to see if the various deans of various horseshit faculties feel they’re getting a fair chance to conduct business when they’re being bayed at by a crowd of bung-holes.

I didn’t use to be so drastic, but I currently think that postmodernist cultural studies and all similar manifestations do not belong to modern universities for the same reason theology doesn’t. Obviously this metastasized intellectual fraud is difficult to eradicate because there are many lunatics with tenure, therefore I really don’t see a short term viable solution.

I think there is a failure of training and possibly personality at the faculty level. Even if faculty are the inmates, a presentation with a Q&A period after is pretty straightforward. Unless, this is what was planned. And if that’s the case, hiring practices need to be investigated. And if the practices are suspect, then as you say, the entire system is cancerous.

Yes. Nothing was achieved except to give right-wing media a talking point. I can just hear them crowing that “liberals” (which these protesters are not) are opposing freedom of speech.

The protesting students don’t appear to be enrolled in the class Sommers is lecturing to, and the actual enrollees are having their education disrupted. First their lecture was cut short. Then any questions they want to ask have to be limited because of the other students invading their lecture. How is this fair?

Authoritarian leftists are not liberals and it offends me that I’m associated with such people by the right, who wouldn’t even get a nuance when it resorted to slapping them in the face.

Unfortunately you or I don’t get to decide they aren’t liberals any more than a Muslim can say that an Islamic terrorist isn’t a true Muslim.
These students may not be our brand of liberal, but they’ve adopted the label and they’re are making it their own.
It’s not the fault of the right that we’re associated with the authoritarian left, it’s ours for letting the authoritarians flourish.

“It’s not the fault of the right that we’re associated with the authoritarian left, it’s ours for letting the authoritarians flourish.”

It may be true that actual liberals have abetted the authoritarians by their silence and sometimes complicity. But, I am not going to let the right wing off the hook. For a century the right wing has attempted to associate the far left with mainstream liberalism. They have been largely successful in their propaganda efforts and that needs to end.

For a century the right wing has attempted to associate the far left with mainstream liberalism. They have been largely successful in their propaganda efforts and that needs to end.
Does this matter? Do you think the people you consider far left think of themselves that way or do they believe they’re mainstream liberals. They’re making rules, at least attempting, they want power and they vote. That’s what matters.

One hundred years of politics may be an interesting factoid, but it doesn’t address the problem.

The authoritarian left is our problem to address, pretending it doesn’t exist, or to fringe to make a difference, isn’t going to make them go away. It’s our house and our responsibility to fix it.

I do not know if the current crop of far leftists consider themselves mainstream liberals. Never in the past have they so identified themselves. If you could provide a poll as opposed to speculation to indicate how they view themselves, we would then have something to talk about.

Do they vote? Again, I don’t know. But, young people in general turnout less than the rest of the population? And whom would they vote for considering that the candidates for both major parties are unlikely to endorse their views?

They may want power, but so does every interest group. Actually getting it is quite a different story. There is no indication that this will happen any decade soon.

As I’ve indicated before, actual liberals have not done a good job in parrying the relentless right wing attempt to conflate the far left with mainstream liberalism, which is every bit as capitalistic as conservative Republicans.

It doesn’t matter how the Regressives see themselves, what matters is how the rest of the country sees them. I’ll tell you how: as the mainstream Left. Which is why decent leftists need to speak out, before the stain sets permanently.

“Authoritarian leftists are not liberals and it offends me that I’m associated with such people by the right, who wouldn’t even get a nuance when it resorted to slapping them in the face.”

Your comment is apt. For the past 100 years in the United States, conservatives have waged an unflagging war in attempting to tag liberals as synonymous with the far left fringe, such as communists. Their propaganda campaign, which goes on to the present day has been largely successful. The fact is that the far left has NEVER come close to gaining political power in this country. Even democratic socialists such as Eugene V. Debs, whose heyday was in the early decades of the twentieth century, were fringe players on the political scene. Even in the depths of the Great Depression of the 1930s, communists did not achieve very much. Liberals are often better capitalists than the conservatives. Some have argued that Franklin D. Roosevelt saved capitalism from its worst impulses.

Unfortunately, liberals have done a poor job in countering the scare tactics of the right wing. This needs to end. I thank you for contributing to this cause.

What is the point of doing this? Nowhere, it seems, is the position of either side articulated in any meaningful way. Someone was going to say something, some others protested that. Apparently no one has anything to say about the subject matter. The net result is that some speaker was disrupted, and that’s it. Utterly pointless.

“if someone can come up with similar recent videos of a left-wing speaker being shut down by the right”

In my experience on and off campus 99% of the time it’s the Left who shut down the Right. I recall reading of the Left at one campus boasting how the took over a newly formed Right to Life club, drove off the pro-lifers and then made abortion on demand the official policy of the newly formed RTL club.

Yes, the Right intimidates on occasion but the Left are masters at it. That’s why so many Maoists, Trots, Communists, Stalinists and the like run student unions.

The shameful attempts to shut down free speech by public speakers are deplorable and should be called out. But, free speech can take many forms. It seems to me that the right to vote is the essence of free speech or expression in a democratic society. The nationwide attempt by the Republican Party at voter suppression is by far a greater assault on free speech than some college students shouting down speakers they don’t like. Voter suppression is an assault on free speech by denying people the right to express their opinions through the ballot box as to who should be their leaders.

Since you need my response so badly I will quote from the article linked above:

While it may seem astonishing to see such tactics being deployed in the world’s most powerful democracy, they cannot be attributed solely to the rise of Trump. In truth, the politics of electoral combat have been heating towards boiling point for a decade and a half – and are the product of a political system that has never, in more than two centuries, resolved basic questions of democratic accountability and is thus unique in the developed western world.

Hardly a Republican issue it seems.

Also, I grew up in a system in which voters were vetted and in which you had to show an ID at the polls. What is wrong with that?

… if someone can come up with similar recent videos of a left-wing speaker being shut down by the right, I’ll be glad to post that, too.

How about the Right shutting down a right-wing speaker? In this case, it was National Review arch-conservative pundit Mona Charen being booed and jeered and heckled on the stage at last week’s CPAC soirée, and having to be accompanied out of the venue by armed security guards, because she had the temerity call out Donald Trump and Roy Moore for their hypocrisy and to question why the conference extended a prime speaking gig to French neo-fascist Marion Maréchal-Le Pen (who, unlike Charen, received a rousing welcome from the CPAC cryptos).

A similar incident happened yesterday at Queens University in Kingston Ontario. Jordan Peterson being the “Fascist” in question. They chanted “Lock ‘Em In and Burn it Down” while barricading the exits.

Thank you for pointing this out Mark; I hadn’t heard of it as I don’t follow or care for Peterson. Kingston is rather close to home however, and what is reported to have happened there is just as heinous as what happened at Lewis and Clark.

According to Queen’s University’s student newspaper, the Queen’s Journal:

“Towards the end of the lecture, protesters blocked the front and back entrances of Grant Hall. While several individuals barricaded the back entrance with garbage containers, one protester yelled “lock ‘em in and burn it down.” The comment was met with applause.

Because the exits were blocked by protesters, event-goers had to exit the lecture through Kingston Hall. Protestors met the Liberty Lecture attendees in the hallway and yelled “shame” as people exited.”

The following statement from an alumnus who was part of the protest makes it clear that they truly desired to prevent Peterson from speaking, and the only thing standing between them and their goal was the security staff and the locked doors:

“The protest has been successful in letting people know that even if we didn’t stop him from talking, we’ve let it be known that we are opposed to him speaking.”

In the midst of the constant banging on doors and windows, a stained glass panel was shattered and a protestor came away with a bleeding fist. What a dismal scene.

A final, humorous observation: Some of these students are enraged over the presence of someone that they believe to be unoriginal and dull:

“Everything he says has been said before and frankly, in a shorter amount of time. I can’t watch one of his videos, it’s an hour long and he says maybe two things, it’s ridiculous.”

As I see it, the views of the speaker are of much less concern than the tactics of the protesters.
It used to be normal to have all sorts of controversial people to speak at university. You either attended out of interest or curiosity, or you did not.
I watch these people protesting, and it is really disturbing. They talk about fascists and such, but do not seem to understand the terms.
I have complete confidence that if they had the political power they seek, a bunch of people would be stuffed on rail cars and sent to the camps.
They seem to be completely assured of their own moral perfection.

This is all simply appalling. For one thing, how do you know what you’re agin’ if you don’t listen to the “other side”? How can you construct any kind of argument if you don’t know what you are arguing against? But logical argument doesn’t seem to be on the agenda here.

I have been following this situation in PDX for a long time. The sad sad part of it all is that this authoritarian new world order mentality is actually emerging from the administration and key faculty, at all of these schools, Evergreen, Lewis and Clark, PSU, Reed, even the community colleges. It is taking the dumbing down of the students to the next lower level. The thing that is really striking as I wander the halls of these various schools,on my way to some of these events, is the total silencing of student voices, student newspapers disappearing and when they do appear highly controlled content, bulletin boards disappearing, and yet even few flyers remain on those. Students are literally scared to offer opinions for fear of being attacked.

What is really scary is that these “students” (one wonders how much time they actually spend studying) will shortly be practising attorneys and government functionaries. Then see how much damage they do.

Perhaps no student loan funds for those who are in the womens’ studies/race studies/colonial studies/gender studies and other such programs? Let them do it on their own dime not mine.

Hate crimes are punished more harshly because of what the perpetrator was thinking — hating the victim. Hatefulness was next attributed to the content of speech. Now it’s used as a reason for denying someone from being heard because in someone’s opinion the speaker they disagree with is actually spreading hate speech.

Except by including the sentences in one paragraph, you haven’t connected hate crime statutes with the no-platforming by regressive leftists. From the cheap seats here, it seems that you’ve got the order backwards in the first two sentences anyway; hatred has been attributed to speech for a very long time, long before hate crime statutes showed up.

It is important you note that hate crimes are sentencing adjustments – the criminals are convicted of crimes, not hate. The punishment for their crimes is enhanced if hate motivated them but the statutes do not make the hate itself criminal.

With all this, I still don’t know what CH Sommers thinks or was going to say.
In that sense these rude children were successful. But they also made me curious about CH Sommers. Going to look her up now. After all, if these nutty puppies are so opposed to hearing what she has to say, it might be interesting indeed, ne? I mean, if arguments can’t be refuted in a civilised manner and need childish disruption, maybe they are quite good?

I read her book Who Stole Feminism years ago. Well argued, level headed look at the insanity in supposed institutions of higher learning. I’d bet money none of the deplatform mob could give anything like a cogent account of her views.

Somewhere in the deep South, I am told that in one of the small pro wrestling venues there is a character that is made to personify a liberal. This ‘heel’ (villains in pro wrestling are heels) is a stereotypical intellectual dandy, and he is introduced as wanting to take away your guns and so on. The crowd goes nuts booing him.

Steverson stressed that it was only a minority of students who disrupted…

Hmmm. Only a minority commit crimes.

So, because a minority disrupted the majority’s opportunity to hear a prominent speaker, that’s OK and there is no need to prevent or penalise bad behaviour? Would it have been better or worse if it had been a majority?

All teachers know/very quickly learn that if you take no action against bad behaviour or reward it with success, you get more of it. And Steverson is the Douglas K. Newell Professor of Teaching Excellence! Good grief.

OMG.
CHS is the most rational critic of feminism ever, even though I don’t fully see eye to eye. (I think gender feminism is kinda/sorta right on a few things, but CHS doesn’t buy into any of it.)

I can emotionally though NOT morally and intellectually empathize with students who want to shut down Ann Coulter, Milo Y, and Steve Bannon, but Sommers???, Sommers???

That’s practically wanting to ban Alan Colmes for having co-hosted Hannity for years, or wanting to ban immigrants from Switzerland because of their relatively non-restrictive gun laws and high level of gun ownership (with relatively few homicides).

I’m willing to bet the students haven’t got a clue on any of Sommers actual views.

I tend to suspect regressive Leftism is more concentrated in Universities than in other liberal enclaves.

JAC; Pursuant to your suggestion/invitation, I share your horror and I have emailed the L&C duo as follows:

Dear President Wiewel and Dean Steverson:
As a retired Judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey and lawyer of more than 50 years as, inter alia, Prosecutor of Mercer County, an elected official, a former adjunct professor of Constitutional Law at Princeton University as well as a variety of other appointments to this and that, I am appalled at the behavior of the so-called “law students” and their effort to “de-platform” Ms. Sommers.

The dripping self-righteousness of the “deplatformers” and the mini-character and quick-fingered Twitterer Ngo as self-appointed “leader” will, I trust, become a source of future embarrassment when they are able to mature and have developed a respect for our First Amendment allowing them to reflect upon their past clownishness.

I am rather sure that both of you, as lawyers and leaders in your communities, share my concerns. You were enmeshed into a regrettable position that was difficult to avoid and which, in turn. produced a mortifying side-show for the College and anyone who has even a remote regard for the Freedom.

As we know, indignation is the most gratifying of emotions.

I wish you both luck in dealing with the offended and self-pitying kiddies.

Very nice letter, Bill and coming from a distinguished voice like yours ought to give Drs Wiewel and Steverson pause, at the very least.

One thing though, Mr Ngo is most definitely not on the side of the disrupters, much less their “self appointed leader”. Mr Ngo, a contributor to The National Review, was thrust onto the national stage some time ago when he was fired from his job as a reporter for having the temerity to report on muslims (using their own words) in a way that was deemed “harmful”. IOW; he was making people aware of the issues at L&C, not driving them.

My suspicion as to why this doesn’t tend to happen on right-wing campuses is that such campuses (e.g. Liberty University) are sufficiently homogeneous and regimented that such invitations to the ‘other’ don’t occur in the first place, not because they are more tolerant of dissenting opinions.

Just for the sake of charity toward conservative institutions (and I’m not a fan, let me make that clear), an alternative hypothesis might be that they’re far more strict and controlling with their students and wouldn’t tolerate some of the mob behavior happening on other campuses.